That's it.

This year is over.
In 2007:
I acknowledged the fact that I had a miscarriage.
I failed out of college.
I got dumped.
I moved.
I got put on antidepressants.
I went off the antidepressants.
I experimented with free love.
I spent a lot of time with Kenny Sunshine without finding out what his deal was.
I worked on that screenplay I was writing.
I gave up on the screenplay again.
I was drunk for two weeks straight.
I threw a party and it bombed.
I started going to hair school.
I almost got kicked out of hair school for bad attendance.
I got robbed.
I had to deal with rats.
I had to deal with my electricity bill being fucked up.
I had to deal with living with someone I just met a year ago.
I went to wisconsin.
I went to urbana.
I went to Kansas city.
I was hungry. A lot.
I was a pack a day smoker for a few weeks.
I had an awesome group of friends.
I watched most of those friends disappear.
I couch surfed.
I wrote a lot of songs.
I rode the CTA.
I dyed my hair.
I cut all of my hair off.
I baked.
I got in some sort of pseudo fight that I didn't want to be in over blogs.
I stopped blogging.
I started a photo blog.
I published a zine.
I lost wieght that I wanted to keep.
I destroyed two pairs of pants.
I stopped wearing deoderant.
I got robbed again.
I met Michael Lovely.
I stayed up all night.
I drank a few energy drinks.
I lost a grandfather when Andrea's grandfather died.
I had dreams.
I had nightmares.
I spent six days in the psychiatric unit at Christ hospital.
I went back on antidepressants and also antipsychotics.
I worked on a play.
I went to a party and danced.
I found out my mom was pregnant.
I stopped biting my nails.
I wrote most of a play.
I drank endless cups of coffee.
I overdrew my bank account to buy cigarettes.
I became more radical.
I broke hearts. Namely my own over and over and over again.
I found a new apartment.
I turned my legs into a jigsaw puzzle.
I bought a thong.
I felt guilty about every unnecessary purchase I made.
I felt guilty about a lot of necessary purchases I made.
I washed my clothes in the bathtub.
I got a cat.
I had panic attacks.
I ended up in train stations with nowhere to go.
I broke my cell phone in half.
I stopped watching tv.
I read a decent amount of books.
I reread a decent amount of books.
I was late.
I was early.
I was, for once in my life, on fucking time.
I drove a lot.
I stopped having car insurance.
I shaved, at different times, a question mark, an equals sign, a leaf, a tree, parenthesis, and an upwards pointing arrow into my pubic hair.
Such a long, long, long year. Good stuff, but the bad outweighs the good.
Hopefully I can keep the good things.
By the powers vested in me as the leader of the chicago heights literary mafia, I am declaring 2007 officially over. It is now 2008.
It's all beginnings from here.
Happy new year, everyone!

Seeing The Past

It's been a weird day, or few days, I guess. Night before last Andrea saw a few groups of people we used to know, and tonight I saw Kyle Jones and Rachel (hey Kyle, hope you found it here alright) and really indie John. I think his last name was Metcalf. People who, at one point, were big parts of my life. Of our lives. I don't think that Andrea and I could be separated into two lives at this point. True, we have our own lives, we are our own entities, but they are incredibly intertwined. The beautiful part is that while we are part of each other we still have our own lives. We are Andrastasia but we are Andrea and Anastasia at the same time. The connection we have doesn't get in the way of anything.
But that wasn't my point. My point was that we've been seeing a lot of old faces. It's not that these people are from years ago, either, they're just no longer involved with us. Nobody is really involved with us anymore. I don't really understand why that's necessary.
It's weird to think about what I was doing right now a year ago. Or two years ago. Or three years ago(that's the weirdest one). The things I was obsessing about, the people I spent time with... Every year is starkly different.
When I was 17 I went to bed at 10:00 on new year's eve. I didn't want to see the ball drop. I alphabetized my records and went to sleep. This year I'm going to be in Hyde Park (most likely), resisting the urge to drink and trying to have a good time with people who I don't really see anymore. Maybe I can convince MikeLovely to come with me. Or I'll go wherever he's going, bail out on Andrea (that probably won't happen).
Every season brings these new groups of people from all of these angles. This season it hasn't been as intense, which is why I feel like I need to make note of all the friends I've had and lost over the past few years. I've never had that many friends in my life.
I haven't really lost anyone, though. There have been no big fights (except for that one, but I'm not going to bring it up. As far as I know we're on good terms now), no outright denials of friendship, just a lot of fading out. And it's always me and her at the end. Probably always will be.


(That's a lie. I lost one friend. My ex boyfriend Kyle. I never want to speak to him again, and I'm trying very hard not to go soft on this. Part of me desperately wants to need him, and the rest of me keeps punching that part in the stomach and telling it,"you haven't needed him since the day on the train with the diet orange slurpee. You need him gone". I'm listening, and for the most part that little voice that tells me to instant message him stays silent. I have so much more now.)

9th & Henneppin- A Tom Waits Song

Well it's ninth and hennepin
All the doughnuts have names that sound like prostitutes
And the moon's teeth marks are on the sky
Like a tarp thrown all over this
And the broken umbrellas like dead birds
And the steam comes out of the grill
Like the whole goddamn town's ready to blow...
And the bricks are all scarred with jailhouse tattoos
And everyone is behaving like dogs
And the horses are coming down violin road
And dutch is dead on his feet
And all the rooms they smell like diesel
And you take on the dreams of the ones who have slept here
And i'm lost in the window, and i hide in the stairway
And i hang in the curtain, and i sleep in your hat...
And no one brings anything small into a bar around here
They all started out with bad directions
And the girl behind the counter has a tattooed tear
"one for every year he's away", she said
Such a crumbling beauty, ah
There's nothing wrong with her that a hundred dollars won't fix
She has that razor sadness that only gets worse
With the clang and the thunder of the southern pacific going by
And the clock ticks out like a dripping faucet
'til you're full of rag water and bitters and blue ruin
And you spill out over the side to anyone who will listen...
And i've seen it all, i've seen it all
Through the yellow windows of the evening train...


I saw a woman somewhere That fit that line, "Such a crumbling beauty". I can't remember where, but then I think about it and I realize that I'm surrounded by them. Miss Kim, a teacher at my school, is a crumbling beauty. I see them on the train in handfuls. I'm one. MikeLovely is one. We're all falling apart. The waitress at top notch, Michelle I think.
I love this song.

What Do I Do What Do I Do What Do I Do?

So The holidays are here again, and with the holidays come home a great many people that I know. They're all slowly trickling in from colleges across the country. Specifically one college a few hours south of here. The U of I. My best friends go there. I'm really excited to see both of them because I miss them when they're not around. A lot. I'm sure there are some other people who are happy that they're coming home, because Andrea means I won't be squatting at the apartment of Michael Lovely and Alex Peters. I get the impression that Alex would prefer if I weren't here. That's a whole other story though. They've both been really wonderful to me, especially Michael. Especially Michael. I like that boy.(He's reading this and blushing or something similar. Thanks for letting me use your computer!)
The problem doesn't lie in where I'm staying or Julie and Andrea coming home. Those are all reasons that I'm feeling less and less fucked up. There's one thing that's hanging there waiting to explode. that little time bomb is coming home from Urbana right quick, and I'm too chicken shit to detonate him in person.
I've been surrounded by people named Michael since I was little. There was blond haired Michael, then Michael from school, then the disappearing Mike Robinson, Then Mike %!>@+, now Michael Lovely. Maybe I have a fixation with the name.
Mike %!>@+ is the one causing me problems right now. He's been in love with me since high school, and I don't know how to reiterate that I'm not in love with him. I keep telling him, but it's hard to tell someone you don't love them when you're topless. Well, they don't believe you. I never loved him, and the novelty of sleeping with him has worn off. I don't know what to do. So, I'm hoping he reads this and understands that I was never his girlfriend, I have no intentions of being his girlfriend, and that he shouldn't hate me for getting bored. It was bound to happen, I had no romantic interest in him. If he doesn't read this (which he may or may not, most likely not), then I'm still in deep shit and I still have to explain to him that he can't keep trying to fuck me. I won't go along with it anymore.
Interestingly enough, all of this was laid out for me by an ex boyfriend... he's a better friend than I ever could have imagined.

The Need For A Text Blog

This is going to be tedious and ramblic. You've been warned.
I quit textblogs last spring. There was a boy and a fight and a need for finishing, but that boy and that fight have gone. I am left with nothing but beginnings. I felt censored, like anything I said would be used against me. Like anything would be ammunition in a war I never intended to be a part of, that I didn't think I started to begin with.
Then I think about names, and I think about intentions, and I think about subject matter, and I think about the nearly empty paper journal sitting in my purse. Most importantly, I think about the location of my laptop, which is the land of sunshine and dust, far away from me. And I realize that I can't go back to the old one, at least. Because I want to have something to say. I want to prove that I'm not on the back burner anymore. I've got my hands in things, and my fingernails are the dirtiest in existence. They won't come clean, but that's no reason for me not to. Sometimes a photograph taken with a cell phone isn't enough.
Here we are, then. When a picture taken with a cell phone doesn't cut it. When there are no pictures to be taken. My toes aren't deformed anymore. My hair is short, back like the last time I was single. Nothing and everything is holding me here. What is the need for a textblog for someone who doesn't plan on writing about politics or movies or cooking?
The need to connect.
Here I am. Find me.

Good bye Pilsen.

When I got home last night I didn't notice anything except that the television was gone. The stereo was still there, so I figured Meg took it with her for some reason. MikeLovely left, and I took my sleepy pill.
Then I noticed that my window was open. And that my closet was open and spilled out.
And that Meg's pride bottles were outside.
The window where the bottles were was smashed. The back door was ajar. Meg's clothes were on the floor and her desk was open. Weird? Yeah.
I called MikeLovely, I called meg, I had a cigarette, MikeLovely came back, I called Meg, I called the cops.
He kept me awake while the cops poked around and filled out reports. Then we both fell asleep. He was gone right before Meg and her parents showed up to poke around and make sure I was ok.
We were robbed again.
We're going somewhere else. Bloodbath McGrath (Momma McGrath) will get us out of that lease we're in because she is awesome and vicious.
I do not want to leave this neighborhood. It became some sort of home. Then again, so will the next place.
The kitten was just fine, however.